Pastor sues over ban on gay 'conversion' therapy

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A San Diego pastor is among those suing to overturn a landmark law that prohibits licensed mental health professionals in California from practicing therapies that seek to make gay and lesbian youths straight.

The Sacramento Pacific Justice Institute challenged the first-in-the-nation law signed Saturday by Gov. Jerry Brown and scheduled to take effect Jan. 1. The lawsuit, filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Sacramento, claims the law violates First Amendment and equal protection rights.

The institute filed the suit on behalf of a psychiatrist and marriage and family therapist who is also a church pastor in San Diego County. Donald Welch, an ordained minister at Skyline Church in Rancho San Diego, operates one of the oldest Christian counseling centers in the area and serves as an adjunct professor at Point Loma Nazarene University and Azusa Pacific University, according to the lawsuit.

The suit also names as a plaintiff Aaron Bitzer, a Culver City man who says he has benefited from the “reparative” therapy.

In an interview Tuesday, institute president Brad Dacus said the legislation by Sen. Ted Lieu, D-Torrance, was a classic example of a crossroads between psychiatric ignorance and political negligence. The law also violates the rights of youth to seek counsel they feel is necessary, he said.

The bill, SB 1172, was supported by a long list of medical and psychogical groups as well as state and national advocates for gay rights.

“It directly threatens the rights of parents and how they choose to address the issue of same-sex attraction with their children,” he said. “It threatens to have the child removed from families that do not affirm the homosexual conduct of their children. And then it also violates the rights and the professional duties of licensed counselors — and even clergy who are licensed counselors — by dictating them to affirm homosexual same-sex attraction as well as the sexual conduct resulting from that attraction.”

Welch did not responded to several phone calls and emails to his home, church, business practice and Point Loma Nazarene University.

Lieu dismissed the lawsuit as “frivolous” and a stretch of free speech rights.

“Their view of the First Amendment is so expansive it would protect therapists and psychiatrists from medical malpractice claims and abuse claims simply because they use speech in practicing their medicine,” Lieu said in an interview.

He said conversion therapy “has no basis in medicine and, in fact, causes harm.” That’s why the state has the authority to step in, he said.

“We let adults do stupid things in society but we don’t let children,” he said. “We don’t let children drink whiskey at a bar even if parents consent. We don’t let children buy cigarettes even if their parents consent.”

The state has precedent on its side, Lieu said. For example, California bans children from electric shock therapy and psychosurgery. Lieu also said the lawsuit’s citations related to the right to privacy is so expansive that no court has ever upheld such a claim.

“This is not about speech. This is about the practice of medicine,” he added.

Not so, argued Dacus. He added that an underlying fallacy to the law is that it presupposes anyone attracted to someone of the same sex does so purely based on their genetics. He further argued there were many youth “suffering” from same-sex attraction who were abused as children.

“These youth have already been victimized once,” Dacus said. “By denying them the ability to get reparative or healing therapy that they choose, they are being victimized twice. That is what makes this so repulsive to those who appreciate not only civil rights but sincerely wish to address the unique needs and the unique therapies that are necessary for each individual.”